me pay twice -for their stuff AND for their footprint.
Of course, before a company is allowed to exit, they should be charged an exit tax, sufficient to pay all the infrastructure they've used, but not yet paid for, to get where they are.
So - educations for their employees and managements, grid and road improvements to accommodate their business locations, unrecovered environmental cleanup costs associated with their departure, local effects on property values of their neighbors, and any and all other externalities associated with their move.
AFTER they pay that in cash, they're free to go.
The only reason it's a no-win right now is because we give them BREAKS to relocate. Only makes sense to a paid for government to do it that way.
The biggest mistake in American economic thinking in the last 40 years is the idea that we need any particular company to exist. They're all fungible, and we need to start treating them like that. If they don't bring benefit to the country, they need to be killed off.
Of course, sometimes, these moves don't work out. Check out some of the London traders who went to Spain, spent millions refurbishing offices and the like, and then discovered that they could only get about 10% of the internet connectivity they needed, so they had to move back. Woops.
But yes, it's a huge problem, so I say let them go. If I have to pay anyway, I don't have to have their great steaming piles of shit next door, at least.
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